Sister Sarah-Joan’s Prom Announcement
Featuring the best nuns since that hussy Maria von Trapp
Did you see Lady Bird? Lady Bird is very good.
In case you didn’t see it, Lady Bird is a 2017 Greta Gerwig masterpiece about how complicated it is to have a mom. Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf will break your heart. It’s also one of the best comedies of the last 10 years! I will definitely do a post about Timothée Chalamet’s character at some point. For now, it’s enough to know that Lady Bird McPherson attends Immaculate Heart of Mary, a Catholic high school in Sacramento.
From what I understand from every stand-up comic ever, Catholic school is not usually a good place. Lady Bird isn’t a movie about being oppressed at Catholic school, so the institution seems exactly fine. Lady Bird stands out at school, but she stands out in a way that I recognized from going to a public high school in small-town Texas.1 Wherever you’re from and whenever you’re born, teens be teening.
Anyway, because the Catholic institution in Lady Bird is mostly benign,2 we get to spend time with a really lovely elderly nun named Sister Sarah-Joan, played by screen legend Lois Smith.3 Sister Sarah-Joan is wildly good-natured, and Lady Bird is clearly fond of her. Sarah-Joan also gets to deliver the thesis of the movie,4 which I can’t resist sharing with you now:5
But enough with the meaning and the depth! Today’s actual Perfect Thing is sillier. Sister Sarah-Joan also gets to deliver one of the best jokes of the movie. The line:
We have a decision to make: prom themes! The top options are: Cities of the World, Eternal Flame, and Movies!
Sarah-Joan relays these options with such enthusiasm. It’s the most endearing thing.
Wichita Falls didn’t really have “prom” per se,6 but we did have two big spring dances. The themes were… uhh… I think “Cuba”7 was one of them and… maybe “Alice in Wonderland” was the other? Prom themes are weird, and Greta Gerwig nailed it. “Cities of the World” and “Movies” are so broad, yet the relentless wheel of prom grinds on every year, and it demands themes on which to feed.
This joke pays off later in the film, when we see the prom… where the Immaculate Heart student body has selected the theme “Eternal Flame.”
Lady Bird gives us elderly nuns chaperoning a hell-themed high school dance in Game of Thrones-level lighting.8 Life on this planet is truly a wonder, a daily joy. Watch Lady Bird, everybody, and have a great day.
At one point, Lady Bird has a conversation with a Hot Popular Girl in which HPG says she likes and intends to stay in Sacramento. Lady Bird is completely blown away. I had the exact same conversation about Wichita Falls, Texas with a Hot Popular Girl in high school, and I was similarly blown away. Hopefully Lady Bird and I are both chiller about people’s personal preferences now!
We only learn that it’s evil from the Catholic Church Extended Universe (CCEU): Spotlight, Philomena, The Da Vinci Code, Dogma, Midnight Mass, and Johnny English.
Lois Smith has been crushing it since the 1950s, but my favorite of her performances are in 2002’s Minority Report and 2016’s The Nice Guys.
Tied for thesis, I guess, with “your mom is warm but she’s kind of scary”
Bonus Perfect Thing today!
We had a much more exclusive system that was basically designed to keep the poor kids from getting to go to a fun dance, but what else do you expect from a city that desegregated its schools in 2001
It was probably actually “Havana Nights” but “Cuba” is funnier
Also Greta directed this scene while wearing full prom attire, which rules
